Is this all there is ?

I'm feeling sort of ripped off here, I used to use the Zone Alarm free version, together with Avast antivirus and Ad-Aware.These worked fine together but created rather much administration since they needed constant updating on their own.So I tried purchasing the Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite, and so far it has caused me nothing but trouble, I'll consider this post my last attempt at getting some answers before ripping the s&amp;%
out and replacing it with something else.
First of all I discovered (see early thread that lead nowhere) that if ZA antivirus is enabled computer will slow to a crawl, and at least 50% CPU will always be in use by the antivirus engine even when computer is idle. So after a few pointless mails with ZA support I disabled antivirus and reinstalled my old trusty Avast, and thought ok at least those are automatically updated so it'll do as a workaround.
Next, the firewall will not work when set to maximum, i.e. by default it's on Automatic learning mode, which may be fine but it keeps allowing some programs internetaccess that should not have it, and keeps allowing other programs full trusted access to the computer that yet again should not have it. But switching to manual will keep the stupid ZA program always asking whether I want to connect this or that to internet or not. In ZA free I had the option to say Allow, and mark a little checkbox if I wanted to save this for future sessions, this does not exist here. So I'm stuck between either letting too many programs have free rein on my computer or having to answer yes every time I want to retrieve an email or browse a website in IE. Additionally the idiotic auto config just yesterday changed the setting to include deleting all my cookies, which I did not set and which I did not want, since there's all my user accounts for multiple websites.
Third on, the antispam feature haven't detected any items at all so far, which is fine, except that I got sort of suspicious and reinstalled Ad-Aware and caught a few tracking cookies in it, so I guess the antispam feature does not do it either and it's back to Ad-Aware anyway.
Additionally I've had to lower the security for IM since it otherwise kept blocking IRC.
And on top of that the Program Control settings keeps adding back things I delete, if I remove programs that no longer are on the computer, such as Ad-Aware, and then switch to another tab in ZAISS and back to Program Control again, Ad-Aware is back in the list, but what keeps adding it ? There's no longer any exe-files or service to it so to me it seems ZAISS just gets it out of thin air or some program cache ?
So, is this all there is, or what's left to gain by keep using ZAISS ? Because if antivirus doesn't work and needs another vendor,
and antispam doesn't work and also needs another vendor, cache cleaner goes berserk and cleans out stuff that's supposed to be left,
and the firewall doesn't work at all and I don't know what to do about it, I can't really see any additional features I need ?